The end may soon be near for Facebook.com — my mother-in-law just “friended me” on the massively popular social networking site. That’s it — it’s all downhill from here for Facebook. I mean, who isn’t going to be on Facebook pretty soon? The cool factor is gone.
Yes, that’s right. This past weekend, after spending two nights at our house, my dear mother-in-law had the audacity to not only sign up for Facebook, but she went so far as to friend me. With, of course, the expectation that I actually confirm her as a friend. There goes the neighborhood.
Seriously, my whole perception of Facebook has changed. It was one thing when a couple of people from my Econ 101 class in college or the guy I worked with in a warehouse one summer tracked me down on Facebook, but my mother-in-law? C’mon, that’s just not right.
Poof! My last bastion of privacy is gone — the place where I could live my so called semi-professional and personal life shielded from my extended family. A private club where I could relax in my smoking jacket, post some photos and throw inane comments up on my Status bar or my buddy’s wall. It was a special secret life I was leading. Even my wife wasn’t there — she had no interest in Facebook. But apparently her mom does!
So now what do I do? Do I dare “unfriend” my daughters’Nana. Surely that is the definition of bad karma. No, I think my special Facebook world is over. What’s next? Let me guess — it’s only a matter of days before I get a friend invite from MY mom!
Do you think my family would find me if I snuck over to Myspace?
I have been thinking lately about the swinging pendulum that is the Myspace vs. Facebook battle. It seems like just yesterday that Facebook was the darling, getting all the press for growing it’s global audience beyond Myspace’s and everyone was writing off Myspace as a flash-in-the-pan. Now, seems like the “Mo” belongs to the guys in LA.
So what gives? Myspace throws better parties.
Listen, everyone likes the guy who throws a party. Myspace always finds a way to throw a party when there are (influential) people in town ready to party. The latest, greatest example was Myspace’s party at the Web2.0 conference that featured Lionel Ritchie (no Nicole apprently).
Now I can’t recall the last time Facebook threw a noteworthy party.? And add to this the buzz around Myspace Music and fact that Myspace appears to be getting more traction in the ad space and it seems like late 2005 again for MS. So Facebook might have the “better” product, all the Valley pedigree when it comes to Stanford engineers and big time investors, but something as trendy as social networking relies on the perception vs. reality dynamic.
Right now, MS has the perceptual edge over FB. Oh, and for those who say the better product will ultimately win, do we need to revive the Apple vs. Microsoft battles of yesteryear?
Lots of coverage around the f8 developer conference this week and MySpace’s initial roll-out of OpenID support. I’ve commented earlier about how much overload confronts user’s online today (at least users who try to keep up with everything happening).
So what’s so great about the evolution of trends like OpenID support and FB Connect – basically this represents early attempts at herding the proverbial Internet “cats”. Giving users the ability to define their persona in a single (or at most a couple) locations and then port that persona with them as they move around the web, increasing the collection of content, commerce and social connections that are most relevant to them. Again, I’m just trying to find the solution that keeps me from having to open 20 tabs in FireFox!
Business Week’s Catherine Holahan has her take on Facebook becoming Portal 2.0 – of course last time I checked there are still a few major registration based destinations (e.g. Yahoo!, MySpace) that can take advantage of this evolution.
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